


Seven Devils

by PeaceAndLongLife



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Cursed!Nico, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Set between Heroes of Olympus and Trials Of Apollo, Stubborn Teenage Angst, Tumblr Prompt, What really happened at the Hades table, Will wants to help, solangelo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:29:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8119960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeaceAndLongLife/pseuds/PeaceAndLongLife
Summary: Nico wakes up to seven vengeful ghosts. They say he has one day left to live.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt for a Solangelo fic based off the song 'Seven Devils' by Florence + The Machine

_"Hades has ruled for too long. We come to burn his kingdom down and spring forth a new era! You have earned the wrath of many angry things. Your curse cannot be undone, Nico Di Angelo. Tonight, the darkness will consume you. You are already dead."_ The spine-chilling voice pulls Nico from the first remotely peaceful sleep he'd had since the fall of Gaea. Of course, the one time he doesn't get plagued by terrifying nightmares, he wakes up to one.

   Nico bolts upright in his bed, hand instinctively sweeping for his blade he always keeps beside his bed. He was drenched in sweat despite the abnormally cool temperature in the cabin.

   The source of the cold was no doubt the six ghosts flanking him - three on either side, all identical in appearance; so old and rotten that there was no longer any flesh clinging to their bones - and one larger ghost at the foot of his bed. Considering the state of the rest of the gang he looked relatively normal, for a ghost. A ghost with half his face blown off in what seems to be a shotgun wound.

   Nico could tell immediately they weren't the typical ghosts. One slash with his stygian iron blade to the tall one he assumed was the leader confirmed that theory. They should've disintegrated upon contact with the blade but instead it passed right through them.

   That was never a good sign.

   The large one laughs, but it wasn't pleasant sounding. It was deep and guttural. "Your foolishness amuses me Di Angelo. You cannot kill death and you cannot kill darkness."

   "You aren't Death." He'd met the real Death and this ghost was definitely not him. Though they did a similar horrifying aura of imminent demise.

   "You misunderstand me. I am not Death, but I am dead and you will be soon too. I look forward to watching the shadows eliminate you." All the identical ghosts seemed to enjoy his bold declaration as they clatter their skeletal jaws in an irritating _click! click! clack!_ Apparently they couldn't speak.

   Something wanting him dead? How _unoriginal._ He'd given them the chance to talk, now it was time for them to leave. "Go away." He demands.

   The ghost didn't even flinch. Maybe he didn't try hard enough or loud enough. "Go...AWAY!" He yells with all his remaining power. It wasn't much, he was already weak and still suffered from the occasional disappearing episode when he wasn't under observation. The strain left him lightheaded, but he still felt solid, which was good.

   The ghosts again didn't move. Dread washes over Nico. These ghost weren't under his control, he was powerless. They did mention they wanted to destroy Hades kingdom, but who were they working for? It couldn't be Gaea, she's gone - hopefully - for good.

   As if he read his thoughts the leader speaks. "Your powers won't work on us."

   "Who are you? What do you want?Who are you working for?" Maybe if he kept them talking long enough he could formulate out a plan on how to bring them down. Nico wasn't a great speaker in any aspect but it seemed to work well enough for all the other demigods.

   "I don't usually confide such confidential details to my targets but I'm in a particularly good mood today.  
You can call me Shade, everyone does. I'm here to make sure you die, and stay dead. Both Achlys and Nyx are seething with anger for the boy named Percy. Apparently they humiliated the poor innocent goddesses in Tartarus."

   "That doesn't make any sense. If it's him they're after why me?" Part of Nico was glad that he was taking the heat off Percy.

   Shade laughs again - if you could even call it that. "They agreed killing Percy would be too quick and generous. Slowly driving him mad with grief however, seemed like a much better torture. You're the perfect first target Nico, we don't even need to intervene, you're killing yourself. You're nothing but darkness in a petty weak shell. Each one of these ghosts around me represents your six strongest emotions. Anger, denial, loneliness, resentfulness, fear, and sadness, the stronger you feel those, the stronger the ghost become, they feed off your negativity."

   Nico was getting real tired of people trying to talk to him about his emotions. Vengeful, bloodthirsty ghosts weren't an exception. He was so desperate to run away from his feelings he almost melted into the shadows. He hated to admit it, but Will was right, he wasn't strong enough to do any of his regular 'underworld stuff'.

Nico cautiously swings his legs over the side of his bed, not moving his eyes off of Shade and co. They didn't show signs of stopping him but he maintains his normal guard. In his hand was his blade, ready to attack at a moments notice.

His bare feet hit the cold floor. Socks and shoes didn't exactly seem like a priority right now. Even if the ghost were all talk and no show so far he knew things could change in an instant.

Nico walks backwards out his cabin, the voice of Chiron reminding him never to turn his back on a potential enemy. The ghost pack followed but was never more then a few feet behind him.

The grass was still wet from the morning dew. The blades would prickle his feet with every step he took, like tiny harmless knives. He wasn't used to going barefoot.

Nico didn't see any other campers wandering, there were a few patrol harpies but they didn't bother him, not after last time they intervened. It was definitely a first for him. He was usually the last one awake, besides the entire Hypnos cabin, but they didn't really count. The sun was just beginning to rise, in its usual hues of pink and orange.

   " _You will die_!" Shade calls after me. " _You cannot hide_!"

 

**•••**

 

   It wasn't until breakfast that Nico truly started to worry. Nobody seemed to see the seven spirits crowding around his lone table, not even the various creatures around camp, including Peleus the guardian dragon who had returned to his usual tree. A few demigods even walked directly through them without any side effects, not even the typical coughing fit.

   Instead of burning a small portion of his meal to his father, Nico slid the majority into the flames. Burning his entire meal would've look suspicious. He didn't have much of an appetite to begin with and the idea of eating while seven ghosts watched over your shoulder, waiting for you to drop dead didn't help.

   Nico was so busy wallowing in his own pain he hadn't noticed that all the grass and plants within several meters had withered to a sad brown colour and large cracks scattered around the dining pavilions floor. A few cracks opened wide enough for three horrible smelling zombies to claw themselves out of the ground.

   All the campers had gone silent, and a few forks could be heard clattering onto the plates. The only one that didn't seemed fazed by the invasion was Will.

   Will jumped from his table to the Ares table. In one swift movement he pulls a sword from Clairesse's sheath and swings the blade in a wide arch around him, successfully decapitating the dead trio. The bodies crumple to dust.

   He strolls confidently over to Nico with a grin so bright, Apollo would be proud. "Bad day?"

Nico stares up at the golden boy in awe. He was paralyzed on the spot, lost in his eyes while his heart rate shot through the roof. _This is it,_ he thinks to himself, _this is how I die_.

   A loud, booming voice scares Nico out of his bleak thoughts. "How many times do I have to tell you? DON'T TOUCH MY STUFF, LOSER!" Clairesse stomps angrily over to Will, ripping her sword out of his hands. "YOU WANNA' FIGHT?"

 _"Die! Die! Die! Die!_ " Shade chants, pumping his fist in the air like he was Coach Hedge. The other ghost follow his lead.

   Will actually _laughed._ Nobody laughs at Clairesse, especially to her face. "No, but thanks for the offer. Can I get a rain check?"

   Her face grows red. "WHY YOU LITTLE SH-" Chiron trots between them. In the chaos Nick slips away undetected. The ghosts looked reluctant and disappointed to leave the fight so early, but they followed at the same distance as usual.

   Maybe they couldn't control were they went, maybe they were tethered to Nico without a choice. If only he could think of a way to cut the rope that connected them, perhaps it would cure his 'curse', whatever the curse was.

   Nico walks till he's well into the forest but still within camp borders. The further into darkness he got, the more opaque the spirits became. That didn't stop him, the darkness was his home, it was the only place he'd ever felt accepted.

   One of the spirits kicks out their foot. Nico falls face first into a damp pile of leaves. _They shouldn't...they shouldn't be able too..._ his muscles grow slack, he couldn't pull himself up from this situation, not this time.

   " _Your time has come! No one outruns death!_ "

   Then everything drains of colour and light.

 

**•••**

 

   After drowning in blackness for an unknown about of time - it seemed like an eternity, but time was a tricky subject - a familiar voice penetrates through the void. At one point he would've recognized it immediately but Nico was fading fast, along with his memories and soul. "Nico! Oh my Gods...what happened? You're fading! Please, if you can hear me wake up...don't die on me, not now, not before I..."

   A drop of something wet pulls him back to the land of the living.

   It was Will, he was crying only a foot away from Nico's face. He must've been still delusional because he didn't _want_ to push Will away. "Wh-" 

   " _No! That's impossible! You were one of us! You cannot escape this curse! Die worthless demigod!"_ Shade screams, a suit of rusted armour materialized on him, along with a sword and shield. He closes in for the kill, piercing his sword straight through Nico's heart, or it _should've_ pierced through him, he was barely a flicker of a body.

   Nico laughs dryly. He just survived dying one way to die another way. "Now who's not that easy to get rid of?" God's, he sounded like Leo.

   "What? Who are you talking too, Nico? Is someone there? Is something trying to kill you? Please tell me somethings not trying to kill you." Will was still hovering closely above Nico in concern. His backpack full of medical supplies hung untouched from his shoulders. How could he help someone you couldn't touch?

   "Somethings trying to kill me." Nico answers bleakly.

   " _The curse! The curse! It will kill you!_ "

   Will curses quietly, scanning the area for a target. Even if he did find something what could he do? Heal someone to death?

   "Tell me everything. Think of something happy, I need you...solid. I need you solid. Doctors orders." Will demands.

   Nico recalls today's events out loud from his point of view, with only minor editing on his behalf. Trying to find a happy memory was the hard part. The brightest part of his life was his childhood with his sister Bianca, but even those memories no longer held the same joyous tones as they had when she was still alive. "I...I can't..."

   Nico watches helplessly alas Will's heart breaks before him. "...Nico..." Another tear falls. "Think of me then, can you do that? Focus on my voice, concentrate, let it pull you back. Do this for me, please. I don't know what the world would do without you...I don't know what I'd do without you. I still want to be your friend."

   Nico smiles half-heartedly. "You _are_ my friend."

   Shade on looks with fear and anger, he was trying to get close enough to Nico to do damage but there seemed to be an invisible barrier separating them from Will and Nico, just the camp border. The six identical ghosts seemed to fade in and out of existence. Whatever was happening to them they didn't seemed too pleased.

   Will follows Nicos gaze. "Is something happening?"

   "Yeah. It looks like they're weakening. They can't get any closer."

   "What's the difference? What happe-" Will stops mid sentence, eyes un-focusing while the brain works overtime. He knew that look, it was the sign the usually children of Hephaestus have whenever they made a significant breakthrough on a major project, usually a very risky, and highly deadly project. Leo was famous for them. "I have an idea. You said the spirits are echoes of your most negative emotions? And that the shadows of darkness will ' _consume you whole_ '?"

   Gee, thanks for reminding me, Nico thinks to himself. "Yeah...?"

   Will laughs tightly, it was both cheerful and musical, a stark contrast to everything Nico has ever been. "As your doctor, I'm ordering you, you need to acknowledge and deal with all your pent up emotions, if you get rid of them, what do you think will happen to those six spirits? It's just like they said, you're killing yourself, I don't want that. And what's the one things that can beat Shade and his darkness? _Light._ And who's the only deviously handsome descendant of a sun god here? _Me_."

   The plan sounded simple enough but it asked so much of Nico. He wasn't sure if he could deliver.

   "You need to talk to me, Nico. you're holding onto too much. Let me help, let me share the weight." Will was trying to grab his hand but kept getting nothing.

   "You don't know what you're asking for." Nico feels himself get lighter, and the sounds around him becoming muffled.

   Will's voice cracks. "I do. Nothing you can say is going to be worse than you are right now."

   Nico wishes he could move away from Will, to look away from his pleading gaze but he had no strength left. Suddenly he feared telling him truth above everything else, even above dying, because he knew if Will begged one more time he might actually cave.

   "I...I can't tell you...I'm sorry."

   Shade begins circling them, testing for any sign of weakness. He was now grotesquely grinning, as if he already won.

   "Please." Will mumbles before wiping his nose on his sleeve. It should've been gross but instead it set something of in Nico's stomach, a flutter of some sort (Either that or he was fading faster then he thought).

   If he was going to die today, he was going to do it on his own terms. _Stubborn till the end._ He was going to have his first kiss even if it killed him.

   Ironically it was the kiss that saved his life.

   Nico squeezes his eyes shut, concentrating on all the darkness inside him and uses the pain as a last surge of strength.

   He lifts his frail hands to Will's cheeks, they made contact, he could _feel._ There was nothing left in him to be surprised, he was desperately focused on not wimping out. Before his confidence faded he pulls Will the short remaining distance and presses their lips together.

   Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered a blinding light going off somewhere and then darkness.

   For being the king of darkness, he was getting real tired of it.

 

**•••**

 

   Nico was hot, like _Tartarus hot._ It bothered him, and his otherwise comfortable null. Now that he was aware of the problem it festered until he couldn't take it anymore, the heat wasn't going anywhere on its own.

   It takes a couple tries before he pried his crusted eyes open. No wonder he was boiling, a dozen or so blankets were piled and draped across his entire body. Nico was essentially the inside of a burrito, or more specifically, a hot pocket _._

   He moves his head as much as the blankets would allow, and examines the same drab walls he tried so hard to escape from. _Sickbay._

   "Nico!" Someone calls. "I use the bathroom one time during my shift and that's the time you choose to wake up?" Will comes comes into Nico's peripheral. He looked different now, older, more mature. His skin was the most pale Nico had ever seen on him and his eyes were red and swollen from crying. "How ya feeling?"

   "Hot."

   Will looks puzzled for a moment, then registers the entire backup supply of blankets on top of him. "Oh. Yeah, sorry 'bout that, you were as cold as death, but maybe that's because you almost _were_ death." He kneels before Nico's bed and starts to unravel the layers.

   "How long-"

   "One week, five days exactly. You needed the rest."

   "What happened?"

   Will ignores the question and tosses all the blankets onto the currently unoccupied bed next to his. To feel the air currents on his skin again was absolutely amazing. "I'm just going to take your pulse here..." Nico wasn't sure if he muttering to himself, or informing him.

  Will's fingers felt like icicles digging into his wrist compared to Nico's hell-fire blanket body temperature.

   There was silence in the sickbay as Will counted, no one else seemed to be admitted. It was hard to believe this was the same place that was bursting at the seems directly after the battle with Gaea and the Romans.

   Sadly, the emptiness gave Nico no sort of distraction to alleviate his mind from Will's touch. It was a stupid thing to get worked up about, his heart however didn't get the memo.

   "Either you just ran a marathon or I'm just a really bad Doctor." Will doesn't let go of Nico's wrist. "Unless something else is getting you worked up?"

   Oh no. No. No. No. His heart was slamming against his ribs now. Nico was beginning to suspect that Will might have had an ulterior motive for checking his heart rate.

   "What happened?" Nico asks again as steady as he could. "How'd you break the curse?"

   Will slips his fingers down his wrist and slyly intertwine them with Nico's. The look of panic he held was priceless, but it didn't stop him from pulling away.

   "When you called us friends, I noticed that you appeared more whole, then you told me the ghosts couldn't get to you then. I then pieced all the parts together and realized the only way to overcome the negative is with positive, you needed a light. I knew you were hiding something with your life, quite _literally._ I just didn't know how petty of a secret it actually was until you kissed me. You acknowledged your true feelings and I got to first base with the most attractive person at camp. Oh, I almost forgot that I unleaded some sort of flash bomb as bright as the sun. Considering your still alive, I'm assuming the ghost dudes got vaporized along with all other living things in a 10 foot radius. There were a few cases of temporary blindness but that's all settled."

   Nico only registered about a third of whatever Will was explaining. There were a few points that kept getting hung up on. " _Petty secret?_ "

   "You shouldn't have to die over who you like. No one cares about that, honestly. Put some faith in the people around you." Will bites his bottom lip. "And if you weren't so obsessed with hiding in the shadows you'd have noticed you aren't the only one. Some people here have been crushing on you for years."

"Who?"

"Me."

"...Oh."

"Yeah."

"I have something to say." Nico slowly sits himself up in bed. "It's not easy for me, but I think I'm ready." Will splays his other hand on Nico's thigh in silent comfort.

"...I'm....gay..."

"So am I. Let's be gay together?"  
  
"Umm...okay."

Will tackles Nico back down on the bed with a lighthearted chuckle. "I'd kiss you again but I'm scared I'd accidentally cremate you."


End file.
